Early Career - Teaching Large Classes - This page contains useful strategies and references about keeping students engaged, using technology and making it work for you, and getting groups to work well.

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Teaching Urban Students - This collection of pages is part of the Cutting Edge and Pedagogy in Action projects and focuses on how to teach in urban environments, including how to handle large class sizes. The pages present information about how to effectively teach and engage students and example activities.

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Assessment in Large Classes - Large classes pose a challenge for instructors who need to assess a large number of students in an efficient way. This page hosts a collection of SERC pages devoted to assessment strategies andexamples of how assessment is performed in the geosciences.

Effective Teaching Methods for Large Classes

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Pedagogy in Action - Interactive Lectures - It can be difficult to engage students with the material in a large lecture class. This collection of pages on Interactive Lectures has strategies and specific examples of activitiesto involve students in large and small lecture-based classes.

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Teaching with Interactive Demonstrations - Interactive demonstrations can also be used in classes of all sizes, as projection systems can make demonstrations visible to students in the backs of large classrooms. In this module you can learn about how to illustrate conceptsand perhaps even entertain your class with simple demonstrations. There are several example demonstrations included.

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Lecture Tutorials - Lecture Tutorials are short worksheets that students complete in class to make lecture more interactive and thus, they can be effective in teaching large classes. They are designed specifically to address misconceptions and other topics with which students have difficulties. This module provides basic information for what lecture tutorials are and hot they can be used in the classroom. References and examples are also provided.

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ConcepTests - ConcepTests are conceptual multiple-choice questionsthat focus onone key concept of an instructor's learning goalsfor a lesson. When coupled with student interaction through clickers and peer instruction, ConcepTests represent a rapid method of formative assessment of student understanding and may be useful in assessing learning in large classrooms (especially when used with clickers). This module explains what ConcepTests are, how they are used, and provides references and examples of ConcepTests.

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Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning - This page, part of Project Kaleidoscope, explains how and why process-oriented guided inquiry learning can be effective in large classrooms. Links to resources with more information are also provided.

Testing the Fixed-hotspot-moving-plate modelpart of Cutting Edge:Introductory Courses:Activities Students examine hot spot tracks, magnetic inclination data, and coral data from the Hawaii-Emperor Seamount Chain to test the hypothesis that hotspots are fixed. Most students have learned somewhere that hotspots ...

Whose Fault Is It Anyway?part of Starting Point-Teaching Entry Level Geoscience:Games:Examples This game has students simulate the propagation of P and S waves after an earthquake and to use the lag between these to determine where in the simulation the earthquake occurred. -

Earthquake Machine Demonstrationpart of Cutting Edge:Introductory Courses:Activities This classroom activity is a demonstration where students predict what will happen under various conditions. The "Earthquake Machine" shows relationships between stress, strain, friction along the fault ...

Simple Landslide Demopart of Cutting Edge:Introductory Courses:Activities Demonstration of control of surface friction on slope stability. Simple analogue model uses a wooden board (the slope), a large rock (the landslide), and transparency and rough sand paper. Students anticipate how ...

Pop Bottle Hydrographpart of Cutting Edge:Introductory Courses:Activities Create hydrograph and explore changes in physical parameters on form of hydrograph. Set up is easy: water is sprinkled into a model watershed (sand in pop bottle) and allowed to dribble onto cheap digital scale. ...

Relative Time Application and Synthesis Exercisepart of Cutting Edge:Introductory Courses:Activities This classroom activity is a formative assessment that explores the degree to which students can apply relative time principles and synthesize that information with concepts related to the rock cycle.